


interlude

by Book_Wyrm



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt No Comfort, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Season/Series 02, Unhappy Ending, mention of miscarriage, off screen character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 10:50:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19744189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Book_Wyrm/pseuds/Book_Wyrm
Summary: Rick kills Randall. Things are not better.In the end they decide to bury Randall because it’s what Dale would have wanted them to do, and because this week everyone’s all about that mantra: What Dale Would Have Wanted.





	interlude

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wouldn’t exist at all if not for [almadeamla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla), who provided the bulk of the plot, beta-read, and (very patiently) cheered me on every slow, slow step of the way. Her fic, _[The Cusp and the Fjords We Wade Through](https://archiveofourown.org/works/272508)_ , was also a huge inspiration for the backstory and characterization here. She's the best, folks. The very best.
> 
> As always, warnings are in the tags, PLEASE read them so as not to run into any content you may want to avoid.
> 
> Also as always, this fic was supposed to be much shorter. In this case, I told myself I was writing a 4k PWP so I could play around with writing Shane's POV. (Always a fun challenge!) I don't know how it turned into this plotty, angsty monster, but there we have it.
> 
> 8/15/19 - I have a hard time believing it, but this fic inspired a [manip](https://imge.to/i/8GidA) by my lovely anon friend, Jo! Thank you so much, girl! <3

**::: ::: :::**

In the end they decide to bury Randall because it’s what Dale would have wanted them to do, and because this week everyone’s all about that mantra: What Dale Would Have Wanted. At least they don’t bury him next to Dale, or the rest of the people they knew. They drive out a few miles so the grave won’t be something they have to look at or walk past every day. An unobtrusive patch of ground on what used to be a neighbor’s land. Shane handles it with T-Dog, because apparently corpse disposal is their specialty now, and because Rick has already done his part by pulling the trigger.

They’d initially wrapped Randall’s head in a burlap sack, but it bled through right away and was as good as nothing. They removed it, let him bleed out on the floor of the barn for a while. Burned the first sack and found a second when the blood had dried and the second doesn’t soak through. Wrapped up like that, gunshot hidden, he might be just unconscious, his head in one piece. They might be relocating some sleep-darted animal, leaving him there to wake up on his own in a new habitat.

It’s a shallow grave.

**:::**

Shane stands in Dale's RV, surrounded by folded Hawaiian shirts and well-worn pocket paperbacks and coffee mugs with “witty” sayings, looking around at his new home. Everyone else is packing their things into Hershel’s house for the winter. Already the nights are getting colder. Screen door banging shut again and again. Shane’s getting a headache.

Hershel doesn’t want him sleeping _in the same house as his daughters._ Shane imagines him saying it that way—has to imagine it, because Hershel never said anything to _him_ on the subject. Just stood there grim-faced on the porch, American Gothic, while Rick—world’s most courteous house guest and world’s shittiest friend—passed the message along. “You might be more comfortable in the RV,” he’d said, “with the house crowded the way it is.” Rick’s always been so damn good at that: making it sound like a suggestion or a good thing when it isn't either. And, yeah, Shane might have called out, _Problem, Hershel?_ and started something, but he’d still be sleeping in the RV at the end of it, either way.

A plastic figurine of a girl in a grass skirt stares dead-eyed at him from the dashboard. Is there some kind of timeframe for how long he’s expected to keep all this shit? It’s like they’re all pretending Dale just stepped out for a minute, might be back soon. Shane picks up the figurine. This, at least—he ought to be able to get rid of _this_ without anyone pitching a hissy. He’s considering how to throw it away somewhere no one’ll notice when he catches a flash of motion outside the RV.

Lori, walking away from the house, her pace clipped, head down and the sun burning in her hair. She walking the way she walks when she’s pissed about something—Shane knows it well—and a second later it's clear why. Rick hurries after her, speaking in a hushed, sharp tone. He puts a hand out and catches hold of Lori's wrist and she shakes him off. He tries again and this time she knocks his hand away, hard, and he falls back and lets her go.

Shane doesn’t mean to be spying—really—and he retreats a few paces back into the RV before Rick can look up and notice him. He waits, measuring out the seconds by counting heartbeats. At the house, the faint sound of the screen door opening, knocking closed. The field in front of the RV is empty when he looks back.

So Rick and Lori are fighting again. The days of Lori playing the loyal, unquestioning wife are over. Big fucking surprise. Shane considers going after her himself and seeing if she finds his presence any more agreeable than her husband’s, but—no. The other day he overheard Rick talking about him, saying _he’s turning over a new leaf._ Whatever the hell that means, Shane’s giving it a shot. Turning over a new leaf means not picking fights with Hershel. It means not going after Lori. Means moving into Dale’s RV because Rick says so, and he does what Rick says now without complaint. Doesn’t matter how trivial (the RV) or stupid (Carl still roaming unsupervised even after the stunt with Daryl’s gun) or dangerous (risking their necks to bury Randall rather than burning the little shit with the rest of the things that have tried to kill them) Rick’s calls might be—Shane’s expected to bite his tongue and let it happen. _Go right ahead, Rick, get us all killed—I’ll be too busy turning over a new fucking leaf to stop you._

He still tosses out the little hula girl, though.

**:::**

Along with Dale’s RV, Shane has apparently also inherited Dale’s duties around the camp. Mostly that means he’s on watch in the middle of the night. (Should he start interfering in people’s business while he’s at it? Is he _obligated_ to start passing unsolicited moral judgments on everyone? He almost asks.) Truth is, he knows being stuck with watch duty is just another of Rick’s not-so-fucking-subtle ways of keeping him away from everyone else. Like he’s something _infectious_. Wouldn’t want anyone else catching what he’s got.

He could call that out if he wanted to. He doesn’t. Being New Dale isn’t so bad, and he doesn’t mind being on watch. The nights are quiet. The kind of quiet people always call ‘restful’, quiet that’s supposed to set you right in the head. Maybe it’ll work—maybe, Shane thinks, it’s working without him even noticing and one day he’ll wake up— _ta-da!_ —soul scoured clean, ready to make his amends. Right all those past wrongs. Hell, maybe he’ll even find God out here. Wouldn’t that be something? _I once was lost, but now am found!_ He looks up at the sky crowded with stars and waits for something, trying to keep his mind perfectly blank, trying to want it. After a while he gets a crick in his neck and has to look back down.

**:::**

There are no more walkers in the barn, no more Randall, nothing to disagree with anyone about. Nothing worth fighting on, anyway. They work on getting the farm ready for winter. Reinforcing fences. Moving a cedar sapling that’s growing too near the house. Patching up holes in the barn so Hershel’s animals will be warmer.

To any untrained eye, things are getting better. Shane knows the truth. He knows what this is. Just white space in between things. Time it takes to reload before the next shot. Break in an action movie while Bruce Willis picks broken glass out of his feet. Something’s going to happen next and it’s just a matter of waiting it out. A time or two he considers jumping ship: just going to Andrea and saying, _You and me, let’s go, let’s get out of here, pick your sunset and we’ll go riding off—_ And then he’ll catch a glimpse of Lori and it’s like a splinter he just keeps stepping on.

He shouldn’t be here. _Lori’s pregnant._ He should leave before something else happens. _Lori’s pregnant._ Lori’s pregnant and there’s not chance in hell Rick’s going to be able to keep her and the baby and Carl safe. Oh, he talks a good game, sure, and if Shane were to bring it up to anyone now he knows what response he’d get: _He_ did _kill Randall._ But Shane was there. He saw the look on Rick’s face after the trigger was pulled. The same look he’d worn as a kid when a game of catch went awry and his throw broke out a neighbor’s window. That desperate, childish rush of horror and regret: _No, no, I take it back!_

So, yeah, Shane figures he’ll stick around ‘til the credits roll. Whatever that looks like. He’s never been one of those people who could walk out of a movie halfway through. He just wishes he could fast-forward through this part.

He wants to know what happens next.

**:::**

Carl visits him in the middle of the night. Three sharp knocks on the door to the RV. Shane isn’t asleep, is actually in the process of figuring out what to unpack from his one suitcase, because living like a house guest around Dale’s bullshit is getting to him. When he opens the door Carl hurries inside and sits at the table with his knees drawn up to his chest, barefoot in his Batman pajamas, hair all sticking up in the back.

“Does your mom know you’re out here?” Shane asks, knowing the answer—and when Carl asks him not to tell her, Shane says he won’t. It turns out Carl had a nightmare. He doesn’t want to talk about it, just doesn’t want to be alone. Shane lets that be without asking why he didn’t wake his parents, and spends a minute looking in the back of the cupboard for any chamomile tea, because people always say it helps with nightmares and it seems like the kind of thing Dale might’ve kept on hand. He doesn’t find any, but he _does_ find an unopened bottle of whiskey hidden behind Ziploc bags and microwave popcorn. He makes a mental note of that for later.

When Carl’s upset, the best thing for him is a distraction, so Shane says he needs help with unpacking. It’s a one person job, really, so he invents another step. He takes each item out of the suitcase, makes a show of checking them for damage, then hands them off to Carl to refold and tuck into the closet. It works. Carl relaxes a little, and some of the color comes back into his face as he focuses on the task.

They get to the sheriff’s deputy uniform at the bottom of the case, and Carl pauses, frowning.

“I thought you didn’t have your uniform anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“You never wear it.” Carl fidgets with one one of the buttons on the shoulder of the uniform. “Don’t you like it?”

“’Course I like it.”

He loves that stupid uniform, always has. In some ways he loved it before he even got it. In elementary school, younger than Carl is now, he wore the same cheap police costume for Halloween three years in a row. Rick used to tease him about it, all glittering eyes and sideways comments and humming the theme from _Cops_ under his breath. The day they got their real uniforms, Rick had the same knowing, sly note in his voice. “Looks real good on you,” he’d said. Shane sighed and braced for another bad joke—when it didn’t come, he turned to find Rick leaning back against the wall, watching him with some new expression that wasn’t teasing at all.

Before that thought can fester, Shane takes the hanger from Carl’s hand, tucks the uniform well into the back of the closet. “Just don’t seem right to go around wearing it. Ain’t a cop anymore.”

“My dad still wears his.”

“Your dad thinks about it different, is all.”

“How does he think about it?”

Shane ruffles a hand through Carl’s hair. “You ought to ask him.”

Somehow that’s the wrong thing to say. Carl’s face falls. They finish unpacking in silence. When they’re done it’s close to three in the morning and Carl is yawning. Shane tells him he ought to head back into the house and try to get some sleep.

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“Dreams are just dreams, bud,” Shane says. “They can’t hurt you.”

Carl seems unconvinced, but too tired to argue. By the door he pauses. He looks down, the same way Rick does when he’s struggling for words, and finally gets out, “I wanted to talk to you, but you weren’t here. I couldn’t find you. You weren’t anywhere.”

“When was that? I’ve been here all day.”

“In the dream.”

**:::**

And then one day—no warning, no fanfare, no feeling of foreboding—the page turns. Glenn and Maggie go out in the morning for a supply run into town, return just before sunset without the car, both shaken and bedraggled, but unharmed. Had to leave the car, they say. Another group showed up just after they did. Well-armed.

They got away unnoticed, they think—Shane has to stop himself asking what the hell that means, they were either noticed or they weren’t—but the car, already half loaded with supplies, could be a tip off to their presence if the other group noticed it and checked inside.

Shane puts together the pieces without too much effort. It was most likely the same group Randall was with. Randall made it sound like they were just passing through, but maybe with the winter coming on they’d found themselves somewhere to hole up and bear out the cold. Found their own farm, maybe, their own quiet corner of the world. Maybe, if it works out for them, they’ll stay longer. Maybe run-ins like the one Glenn and Maggie had are going to become commonplace. Unavoidable. Dangerous.

Knowing what they know about these people, Shane thinks the next step is pretty clear: they need to leave. But before he can say as much, Rick focuses in on getting the car back, says he and Daryl can go out and retrieve it if it’s still there.

Shane begins, “And if those guys are still—”

“We’ll handle it,” Rick cuts across, and that’s the end of that—he doesn’t want to hear it. Doesn’t want to hear anything Shane has to say anymore, unless its in perfect, total, kiss-ass agreement.

They head out without any more discussion than that, no round of goodbyes or reassurances. Rick nods once in Lori’s direction. Sound of the engine receding into the muffled distance. They’ll have the sense to switch off the headlights long before they hit town. Park out on the road, use flashlights and keep low to the ground. The rest of their group stands in the circle of light around Hershel’s porch—the air is thin and chill and the light is turning grey, but none of them can seem to find a reason to move.

**:::**

They come back, of course. Even now, Rick’s unbelievable, unwarranted luck holds out. Both cars. The loaded-up supplies still in the back, untouched. No one’s gotten any sleep on the farm and the morning is grey and stiff with a solid, damp cold.

They stay on the porch in spite of the chill to talk, all of them circled around. Only Beth and Patricia go into the house—there’s a clatter of dishes, smell of frying onion and potatoes. Lori and Carl sit on the porch swing, wrapped together in an over-sized Irish wool shawl. They look like a postcard or a scene clipped from a magazine, a picture Shane wishes he could step into. Place a kiss to the worried crease between Lori’s brows. Make Carl laugh until his rigid shoulders relax. Promise them both, _It’s going to be alright_.

Rick doesn’t do any of that. Just stands in the middle of the porch, his back to his family, talking through _what might happen_ and _what might not_ , and Shane has to look away and swallow down a flare of disproportionate, almost uncontrollable anger. He feels as though he’s been robbed blind.

“We have no reason to believe these people even know there’s anyone else around here,” Rick says. “There was no one in town when we went back, and no one followed Glenn and Maggie. For all we know that other group was just passing through.”

“What if they weren’t?” Carol asks. Her voice shivers with cold, even though at some point she wound up with Daryl’s jacket around her shoulders.

Rick says, “It doesn’t change anything. We stay out of their way.”

No one says anything about Randall. Shane feels Andrea watching him, waiting for him to speak, and avoids meeting her eyes.

“I mean—is that really an option?” Glenn says after a moment, when it becomes apparent no one else is going to. “We were really lucky yesterday. We weren’t right out in the open and we had a back way out… If these guys are really camped out around here, I mean, to _stay_ , then isn’t it sort of like trying to avoid your neighbors at the grocery store? You can do it most of the time, but…” He trails off.

“The one time we can’t, we’re royally screwed,” Andrea finishes for him.

“We take precautions,” Rick says. “Set up a better watch—the windmill’s a good vantage point, if we fix it up. We don’t leave the farm if we don’t have to. Take more than two people on trips into town if we’re going. With any luck, these people aren’t sticking around, and if they are, it’ll only be for the winter. We keep our heads down and—”

“Bank on more luck?” Andrea says.

From the house, the cheerful cooking smell has taken on an acrid, dangerous edge: something starting to burn.

Rick stands a little straighter. “We’re not debating this. We don’t have any other option.”

“Sure we do. We pack up and get the hell out of dodge before—”

“No one’s stopping you,” Rick says. “You think you can handle yourself on the road, go right ahead.”

A flicker passes through the group, swift and subtle. Andrea stops arguing, stands there looking like she doesn’t really believe what she’s just heard. Lori’s sitting with her cheek pressed against Carl’s hair, staring fixedly at some point in the middle distance as if she hasn’t heard at all. Maybe it’s just the morning light, but she looks very pale.

The moment lingers—breaks. Rick turns and goes into the house. Hershel follows him, and the screen door clatters shut at their backs.

**:::**

“Thanks for your support back there,” Andrea mutters a while later, and Shane almost laughs.

“Supporting each other— _that’s_ what we’re doing now?”

She ignores the jab. “You can’t _honestly_ try to tell me you think sticking around here and keeping our heads down is a smart idea.” And, getting no response, “So, what—the silent loyalty act works for Daryl, you figure you’ll give it a shot, too?”

This time Shane does laugh. Maybe if Andrea wasn’t as exhausted as the rest of them, she’d puzzle it out—she’d see Shane’s not too concerned with loyalty and keeping friends at the moment. He’s thinking of what Rick said.

_You think you can handle yourself on the road, go right ahead._

Andrea catches the— _subtle!_ —fact she’s being mocked. She gives a quick, dismissive shake of her head and starts stalking off. About three paces away she turns back.

“Killing Randall was the wrong call,” she says. A new, hard edge in her voice. “And if you can’t see that yet—then god, Shane, maybe Dale _was_ right about you.”

**:::**

They fix up the windmill, of course. Shane does; T-Dog passing boards up to him, both of them commenting on the cold and not much else, because no one’s talking much since that meeting. The windmill _is_ a better vantage point than the RV, and they comment on that, too. Shane doesn’t say it won’t make too much difference whether they can see a group of thirty guys heading their way or not. He doesn’t say the outcome will be the same either way. They both know it.

He’s not sure at what point he gave up arguing with Rick. Some time after Randall, probably. In the days leading up to the execution, it had started to seem like a sort of test: if Rick could pass—if he could make the right call, the tough call, for _once_ —there was a chance of salvaging whatever scraps of friendship they still had. It all came down to that. If Rick could just pull the trigger… And then he had pulled the trigger, and nothing else changed. So much for magical thinking.

T-Dog cups his hands and blows on his fingers to warm them. “Could really go for a cup of coffee about now.”

Shane says he could, too, and T-Dog heads off to the house, promising to be back soon. Alone, there’s only the slow whoosh of the windmill blades, the fall of the hammer, the round-and-round song of an off-season whippoorwill somewhere out in the brush. It could pass for peaceful, if Shane wasn’t looking up at every flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, if he wasn’t expecting at any second to hear the crack of gunfire.

The screen door of Hershel’s house opens, bangs shut again. Shane waits for T-Dog to arrive with coffee—really could use a cup—but when the silence goes on and T-Dog doesn’t show up, Shane raises his head and looks back towards the house.

Lori, standing out on the grass in front of the porch, wrapped in a thick coat, pushing her hair back with one hand. Her face turned towards him. Shane freezes. Some part of him leaps at the sight of her like a pin to a magnet—a part of him that will go on leaping forever, as long as they’re around each other. It strikes him at once what an _idiot_ he’s been, all his thinking about getting past this and turning over a new leaf, like there was ever any chance of that, any chance at all.

“How’s the view up there?”

He doesn’t jump, doesn’t do anything as ridiculous as drop the hammer. Rick’s voice, immediately close. He’s standing at the base of the windmill, a hand up to shade his eyes, expression unreadable beneath the shadow.

Shane makes a show of glancing over at the trees, like he’s really considering it, like there’s any fooling each other anymore.

“It’ll do.”

He feigns interest in a fitting another nail to a board already full of them, gritting his teeth, aware of Rick’s gaze on him. What a fucking game they’re playing. _You know that I know that you know…_

T-Dog shows up with the coffee. The three of them make their way through some more small talk about the cold. Rick takes a small sip from the second cup—how many times they must’ve shared a thermos of coffee at work, thinking nothing of it—before passing it up to Shane, who finds all at once he doesn’t want it anymore.

When he gets a chance to look back towards the house again, Lori has already gone back inside.

**:::**

He makes one more good, firm effort at nihilism—they’re all going to die anyway with the world the way it is, so he shouldn’t care if Rick gets them killed this week or the next—but can’t wrap his head around it. He _does_ care and he can’t stop. And since no amount of arguing or pleading or logic gets through to Rick, the only solution is to go around him, to find another option, take the choice out of his hands. Shane thinks about the discussion he had with Andrea a while back—some kind of coup—but it won’t solve what really needs solving. And besides—he's not interested in being the one calling the shots for the whole group, not anymore.

Lori and Carl. That’s the thing. The only thing.

Over dinner he tries to catch Lori’s eye, but she’s focused on picking at her plate, nudging green beans around with her fork like she’s too sick with worry to take a single bite. (Rick, for his part, doesn’t make any effort at encouraging her to eat, doesn’t look at her at all, though they still sit shoulder-to-shoulder at the table.) Shane doesn’t let himself get too hung up on that. It’s been difficult to catch Lori alone the past few weeks, even for a second. She’s not doing well, sleeping a lot, wants to be alone. He can’t blame her.

He moves on to another strategy: makes a show of pretending to be more exhausted by the work on the windmill than he is. Not whining exactly, but he rolls his shoulders, winces, comments on the cold for the millionth time… When he asks Hershel if there’s any chance of getting a hot shower before the evening’s over, Hershel doesn’t seem too surprised, just nods and says he supposes that would be alright.

Shane thanks him, and even manages to interject a note of genuine gratitude into his voice. If all goes the way he hopes, it won’t be long before Hershel and his _supposing_ will be in the past.

There’s a lull after dinner, cleaning up with dishes. Shane fetches a change of clothes from the RV, but lingers, making small talk and finding excuses to stay and talk to T-Dog and Glenn until Lori leaves the table, heading upstairs. Another minute loitering in the kitchen, so it doesn’t seem suspicious. Hershel reminds him he ought to be getting that shower, polite but firm, the message clear: _So you can get out of my house._

It’s the fastest shower he’s ever taken. He steps out, towels off, dresses, and leaves the water running. The bedroom Lori and Rick and Carl are sharing is only one door down the hall. Shane listens hard, not expecting to hear anything—but he does. A muffled conversation, almost drowned out by the sound of the shower. Lori’s voice sends a bright dart of warmth straight through him. A spike in the volume level, and Rick’s voice, too, an angry edge to it. There’s a surprise—a real one. For all his failings, Rick’s never actually raised his voice to Lori, at least not where anyone else could hear. When he’s pissed, Rick tends to get quieter, more intense: Shane thinks it must be a calculated maneuver, specifically designed so afterwards he can say, _I was being so reasonable, I just don’t understand…_

A door slams, slicing off the conversation. Lori’s always the first to walk out. Her footsteps, quick and angry. Shane opens the bathroom door and steps out into the hall.

Lori jumps, flinches back a step. There’s a trace of high color on her cheeks and her hair is in disorder, like she’s been running her hands through it, but it’s good to see—she’s been so pale and quiet lately, anything else is a relief.

She starts, “Jesus, Shane, you scared the hell out of—”

He holds up a hand. “Just listen. One minute. That’s all I’m asking.” Her expression shifts, shutters closed, but he persists anyway, “This other group. You heard what they’re capable of, same as I did. Staying here’s just sitting on a time bomb. One of these days—”

“Shane—”

“ _Listen._ You know I’m right. Rick won’t see it that way. If he does, he won’t admit it. Whatever’s going on with the two of you—” He senses she’s about to interrupt again, and rushes on, “—whatever’s going on, it don’t matter. You’ve got to think about Carl, Lori. You’ve got to think about yourself. And the baby. It ain’t safe here anymore. You can’t just sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop because Rick says so.”

Lori says nothing. Her face is an ashy, rigid blank. Shane wants to put a hand out to her, to make contact, but he knows he can’t. If he does anything wrong now, anything at all, she’ll recoil. Everything hinges on getting this right.

“I ain’t asking you to do anything. But I’m telling you: you get your things together, you get Carl, leave a note for Rick, and meet me out at the RV. We’ll get out of here. No questions asked. It won’t be easy, I ain’t saying that, but I’ll make it right. I’ll keep you safe. You know I can. You show up tonight or tomorrow night, any time before dawn. You don’t, I’ll never ask again. That’s the end of it.”

As he speaks, he feels the smallest exhilarated rush of—not happiness, but close enough to startle him. He has a flash—a few nights after high school graduation, a dark car on a dirt back road, _Let’s get out of here, just start driving and we’ll figure out the rest_ —and shakes it off before the memory can catch at him.

Lori stares at a spot somewhere off to his right, but something flickers in her expression: she’s considering it. Shane holds himself back again, doesn’t touch her. He nods, swallows down a quick flare of hope, and ducks back into the bathroom to shut off the shower and gather up his laundry from the floor. He expects to find the hall empty when he turns back.

It is.

**:::**

He tells himself not to expect her to show up that night, but he does. He tidies up the RV, boxing up the last of the Dale stuff, making up the second bed. Washing the few dishes he uses out here. Pacing. Checking his gun, counting out ammo again and again, so he really will be ready to go, no hesitation.

One by one, the lights in Hershel’s house flick out. It’s dark by midnight. A light, steady rain starts up soon after, produces a sound like drumming fingers on the RV’s thin roof. Like someone shy but unerringly persistent, tap-tapping again and again: _Let me in, let me in._ Glenn’s on watch in the newly-repaired windmill, and Shane doesn’t envy him. 

He tries to tell himself to get some rest. To stop his pacing. He tries to expect the worst: Lori won’t show up. Not tonight, not tomorrow. She won’t even meet his eye ever again. Like he said: that’ll be that. He tries to figure out what he’s going to do in that case, but he can’t think past the waiting. Some part of him—not a small part, either—really believes she _will_ show up. Really believes at any second he’s going to hear a—

Knock at the door.

He feels as though he’s tripped over something while standing still. On some level, he was expecting her last minute, an hour off from dawn tomorrow, showing up disheveled but bright-eyed and set, determined. He didn’t really think she’d jump on board without taking a day to deliberate.

He tries not to rush to the door, not to seem too eager as he opens it—

To find Rick standing there in the rain.

“You have a minute?” Rick asks, his voice very level.

Nothing for it—Shane holds the door open, a little wider, everything inside him sinking, and Rick steps past him into the RV.

He looks out of place there—a dark bedraggled figure among the last remnants of Dale’s colorful marigold drapes and cutesy mugs—worse, Shane thinks, tugging the door closed, because it might’ve been Lori here instead, an infinitely more welcome sight: her hands tucked into the depths of her over-sized coat, managing the smallest, hopeful smile… Rick’s smile isn’t hopeful, or even particularly friendly.

“You tidied up in here. It looks better.”

Shane leans back against the counter. Rick’s not here to chat about the decor, and they both know it. “Lori told you.”

Rick nods. “She said we need to have a talk.”

Probably not the words she used. Shane knows he ought to be annoyed with her—she could’ve stayed away, not showed up, didn’t have to go off and say anything to Rick—but he can’t. Instead he feels the brief, hysterical urge to laugh. It’s like a play, one they’ve acted out plenty of times the past few weeks: wronged husband confronts the Other Man. Round two. Or twenty. And right on cue Shane sighs, crosses his arms—then, because it comes next in the stage directions, he says, “What do we _need_ to talk about, Rick?”

“This other group, apparently.” Rick shrugs off his soaked coat, hangs it on a hook by the door, making himself at home. “Lori says you’re worried.”

Shane hesitates. This is off-script.

Rick misreads his silence. “I know I haven’t really let you get a word in edgewise, this past week,” he says. “Everyone’s scared right now. Arguing would’ve made it worse. You know that as well as I do.” He pauses, gives a small, permissive nod. “When we’re alone, you can speak your mind.”

“ _Can_ I?” Shane says. “Thanks, Rick. That’s real generous of you.”

“You know I don’t mean it that way.”

“How the hell do you mean it?”

A gust of wind lashes rain against the side of the RV, a burst of noise like distant gunfire. Rick says levelly, “You don’t agree with my call, about this other group. Let’s talk about it.”

“Don’t see much point in that,” Shane says. “You already made up your mind. Talking ain’t changing it. Don’t matter what I say, anymore.”

“You really think that? Even after—” He breaks off, shaking his head, jaw tight. “I’m trying, Shane. I want us to get past this. But we can’t do that unless we both make an effort.”

He’s not going anywhere, standing firmly in the middle of the RV, all set and determined, following some other script he wrote for himself, a script that always, always, casts him as the hero. Shane is struck again by the unfairness of it—this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, it should be Lori here, and Rick back in the darkened house somewhere, alone.

But it’s not. Shane realizes he needs a strong drink, realizes a second later it’s not such an unachievable goal after all. The whiskey bottle is at the back of the cabinet where he left it. He grabs it, and a pair of clean glasses.

Rick watches him pour. “Where’d you find that?”

“Came with the new place,” Shane says, with a gesture around at the RV. “Dale must’ve been saving it for a special occasion.” He holds out one glass to Rick—a moment’s hesitation before he takes it—and keeps the other for himself, drains it in one neat shot. He can feel the warmth of it all the way down, the most welcome thing he’s felt in days. He pours himself another.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Rick says, something in his voice makes the question sound like a test—like there’s a right answer, and a wrong one. Later he might use it: _If you’re really so worried we might be attacked any time…_

“Didn’t say it was a good idea,” Shane says, turning to him. He raises his glass to the air, a mock toast. “To making an effort.”

For a moment he thinks that’ll be the end of it after all—Rick stands very still, without reacting, but something changes all the same, as subtle and definite as water turning to ice, and Shane can almost hear the sharp snap of Rick’s voice, the glass banging down, the door slamming—

Instead Rick raises his glass, and they drink.

“So,” Shane says, “what you said to Andrea the other day—all that about leaving if she didn’t like it here. Weren’t really talking to _her_ , were you?”

He called it right—Rick, caught off-guard, doesn’t hide the look on his face fast enough.

Shane smiles at him. “It’d sure be a whole hell of a lot easier for you if I wasn’t around here anymore, wouldn’t it?”

Rick doesn’t answer right way—that, in itself, is its own answer. After a moment he sighs, slides into one of the seats at the RV’s table, runs a hand over his face. The overhead light catches him at a cruel angle, and it’s like a glimpse of what he’ll what he’ll look like in thirty years time. If he lives that long. The sight sets off a faint, painful twinge somewhere in Shane's chest; something long-buried scratching towards the surface.

“The truth is,” Rick says, “some days I’m afraid of what might happen if you stick around.”

Shane stares at him, not sure he means that the way it sounds; he doesn’t look like he has the energy for a real threat.

Rick doesn’t look at him, turning the whiskey glass in his hands, watching the dim light circle along its edge. He begins again, “I keep having this dream—” and then breaks off, uninterrupted.

Shane waits—he doesn’t want to ask, but he does. “Dream?”

“It’s nothing.” Rick shakes his head, throws back the rest of his drink with a neat flick of his wrist. “I don’t know why I thought of it.”

Carl talking about a dream of his own: _You weren’t here. You weren’t anywhere._ Weeks ago, Lori’s face damp with tears but her eyes bright and clear, looking up at him in the doorway, saying, _Stay_ —she’d meant it, that was real, no matter what else she said, no matter what else happened—

“Think it’s a little late for me to be hitting the open road,” Shane says. He picks up the whiskey bottle and joins Rick at the table, pours them both another glass.

“Suppose you’re right about that,” Rick says, straightening up. The reasonable leader act snapping back into place, fast as that. “We should talk, then. Try to get on the same page about this other group. I don’t want another fight.”

Is it really another fight if the last one never ended? Shane decides not to ask. “Alright,” he says. “Then talk.”

**:::**

_“You going to say anything?”_

_Rick blinked, looked up from staring out the passenger seat window._

_“What?”_

_Shane indicated the cassette player; Johnny Cash had run out a while ago, and Rick hadn’t restarted it. “Been sitting here about twenty minutes without talking.”_

_“Twenty minutes isn’t a very long time.”_

_“Something on your mind?”_

_“Matter of fact, there is.”_

_“You planning to keep me in suspense?” And when the silence went on: “Seriously, man, spit it out. You’re making me nervous. Someone died?”_

_“No,” Rick said. The car jolted over potholes, places where heat and traffic had cracked chasms in the tarmac. After a long while Rick said, “It’s good news. Leastways, I hope you’ll think it’s good news.”_

:::

The storm’s picking up, fast. More wind, more rain. The RV’s overhead light casts a grim, dingy pall over the tidied-up RV, the bare nail on the wall where one of Dale’s signs used to hang, the whiskey bottle. When Shane glances up and sees the scene reflected in the dark glass of the window, he can’t help but feel as though he’s caught a glimpse of some domestic scene from another life: the two of them cast in the roles of unhappy, bedraggled travelers on the world’s most depressing camping trip.

Rick recites another version of the speech they all got a week ago—don’t even know if these people are sticking around, don’t know if they’re the same group as before, no sense in packing up and leaving based on a guess. At the end of it, he gives Shane a long look, unbearably patient and level. “And you think that’s too much of a risk?”

“I think you’re doing a lot of hoping for the best,” Shane says. He has a flash of annoyance with himself, getting roped in to talking about this, like it’ll change anything. “And if you got any of it wrong, we’re all dead. Worse than dead, if you remember what Daryl got out of Randall.”

Rick almost hides it—almost, but not quite. He gives a quick, subtle flinch at the name.

“The way I see it,” he says, recovering, “we shouldn’t decide anything until we know more about what we’re dealing with. We should take a look around. Find where this group is camped out around here, if they even are…”

That’s another of Rick’s skills: the ability to sound like he’s making a vast concession, so anyone else comes across as unreasonable if they won’t meet him halfway. Shane doesn’t feel like playing that game.

“And let’s say it turns out they’re a stone’s throw from here,” he says. “What’s the plan then?”

“Then we do what we need to do. That’s what you’re always saying, isn’t it?”

“You mean to tell me we find out these guys are camped out around here, you’re ready to pack up and go—no debate?”

“I didn’t say that.”

It’s a moment before Shane gets it. “Us against thirty guys. _That’s_ your plan?”

“It’s not my first choice. But if it comes to that…”

On one of the overhead shelves, there’s a piece of Dale decor Shane missed. A Pottery Barn coffee mug in the shape of a cutesy owl stares down from one of the cabinets, eyes wide and faintly perturbed-looking, as if it can’t believe what it’s witnessing. Shane raises his glass to it in a wordless toast: _Me neither, man._

“You know,” he says, setting his glass down and reaching for the bottle again, “always knew you were a crazy son of a bitch. Just didn’t know how deep it went. You really do think you landed yourself the starring role in a Clint Eastwood movie, don’t you?”

“You’d rather we give this place up without a fight?” There’s an edge to Rick’s voice now; he doesn’t like being laughed at. “Do you realize what we have here? We could look a hundred years and never find another place like this. There aren’t any left.” He makes another valiant attempt at controlling his tone, but his gaze, flicking up to Shane’s face, has something behind it. “You’re mixing up safety with running scared. We could survive on the road, but that’s all it would be. I want more for Carl than just surviving. We have a shot at a normal life, here.”

**:::**

_“A ‘normal life’? What does that mean?”_

_“Means a wife and kids. Means someone you can introduce to your parents. Means you don’t flinch every time some asshole at a bar—”_

**:::**

Shane sets his glass down a little too hard. “You had enough trouble killing one guy. All of a sudden you're ready to take on thirty?”

He’s gotten a punch in the face for less. Some part of him is almost hoping for that now, and for a second he thinks he might get it. Across from him, Rick goes very still.

“I did what needed to be done, didn’t I?” he says, after a small silence. “Exactly what you wanted, in the end.” And, when Shane scoffs, he says, “I’m not going to be ashamed I took some time to think things over. I’m not like you. Murder doesn’t come so easy to me."

Shane waits, sure at first that he’s heard it wrong, then sure Rick is about to add something to clarify what he meant, because for all that he’s said some awful things in the past, it was always unintentional. It was never like this.

When nothing happens, Shane says, very levelly, “You want to run that by me again?”

It seems to break something. Rick blinks, like a sleepwalker awakening from a dream, amazed and horrified to find himself where he is. He lets out a harsh exhale. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

But he did. Of course he did. Shane runs a finger around the edge of his glass and wills himself not to throw it. “I think it’s about time you were getting back to Lori,” he says.

“Shane, I—” Rick breaks off, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean that,” he says again. “You _know_ I don’t think that. I don’t know why I said it.”

He said it because it’s true. Shane feels something like the recoil of a gunshot running all the way up his arms and has to bite the inside of his cheek until it clears.

“There’s _thirty_ of these guys,” he says, when he trusts he’s got his voice back under control. “Randall said they’re well-armed. It ain’t like in the movies. We go into that fight, not too likely we’ll be coming out of it.”

Silence across from him. He sees in the dark mirror of the window that they’re both looking out again. Rick’s face is pale, stricken. Their eyes meet in the reflection, and after a moment Rick drops his gaze away.

“I keep thinking about that snow storm,” Rick says, at last. “You remember that? It was right after we moved out. We were at that party and the sky just opened up, all of a sudden. First time either of us had seen snow, I think.”

“Rick—”

“We had that snowball fight, and then the power went out and we barely got home, spent hours just talking there in the dark, trying to eat the ice cream in the freezer before it melted—"

“You’d put Carl and Lori at risk, if this thing blows up?”

A small, sharp silence. After a while, Rick says, “Let me do the worrying about Carl and Lori,” and he doesn’t sound annoyed, just firm. The message is clear all the same: _Back off_.

Shane doesn’t back off. “And how about if these guys find us before we find them? The farm ain’t invisible, Rick, and if they roll up here, it won’t matter if we’ve got someone on watch or not. Then what?”

“You’d give up this place because of something that might not ever even happen—”

“But _if_ it does—”

“ _If_ it does, we’ll handle it. But it _won’t_. I need you to trust me on this. I need you on my side again. I can’t keep going the way we are.”

“I ain’t fighting you just to be fighting,” Shane says. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s a lie.

“You know that what you're saying—just packing up and leaving—you _know_ it’s not an option.”

“I think you know it _is._ I get it, man. You’re thinking Lori can’t be on the road with the baby, but we’ll—I ain’t saying it’ll be easy, but we could make it work. Hell of a lot better than—”

He stops mid-sentence. It’s the look on Rick’s face that does it: all that annoyance and coolness gone in a second, replaced with the rigid, agonized blank expression of a man sitting through stitches without painkillers.

“Rick?”

Rick blinks rapidly, as if someone has dashed cold water in his face.

“There’s no baby,” he says.

He says it very clearly, yet the words, lined up like that, don’t make any sense. Shane almost corrects him— _Yeah, there is,_ you’re _the one who told_ me—but the idea of saying it out loud is so ridiculous he shakes his head, certain he’s misunderstood.

“What?”

“Lori lost the baby,” Rick says. A flat, hollow note in his voice. “About a week ago.”

Shane’s body understands first: he goes cold all over, chest tightening. He stands up—too fast, and for a moment the room rocks around him and recedes. There’s a high white buzz in his ears.

“What happened?” His own voice seems to come from a long distance off, as if by some trick of ventriloquism.

Rick is staring out the window, his jaw tight. “Hershel says it was probably stress.” There’s an edge of bitterness in his voice, an anger Shane can’t make any sense of, can’t even try. _Stress_. He thinks of Lori wrenching her arm out of Rick’s grasp that day, of raised voices through the wall. It feels like he’s swallowed a hot coal and it’s lodged somewhere in his chest.

Other people, faced with unwarranted, overwhelming cosmic unfairness, wind up blaming God. Shane blames Rick.

He doesn’t remember going to the counter, but suddenly he’s standing there, staring down at the sink full of broken glass and a fresh, red splash of blood. His hand is cut. The pain seems to belong to someone else.

Motion at his back: Rick’s on his feet, moving quickly towards him.

“Shane? Are you—”

He reaches out—the first touch of his hand seems to _snap_ something, like an elastic band stretched past its full potential.

It happens fast. Shane moves without thinking, whips around. He gets a handful of the front of Rick’s shirt, and shoves him hard back towards the door. Hears stitches rip, broken glass crunching under the heel of Rick’s boots. The RV gives a single, unbalanced shake as Rick catches himself against the counter. A look of shock and anger flashes across his face and he reaches out again, about to say something reprimanding and firm, and Shane isn’t aware he’s holding anything until he’s throwing something. The whiskey bottle misses Rick’s head by an inch, hits the corner of the door frame behind him and explodes in a dramatic shower of glass.

Rick recovers—the most surprising thing about him, always, is how fast he can most when he wants to. It's like dealing with a slumbering dog one second and finding its teeth in your skin the next. He’s next to the door and then he isn’t; he catches hold of Shane’s arm and twists it up behind his back, one fast, clinical move. And even as Shane wrenches against the grip, starts to twist out of it, Rick’s fingers dig into the cut on his hand, _hard_. Shane registers a strange freezing sensation, as though his hand has been doused in ice-water, and then the freeze turns to fire. A pain so intense it locks all the muscles in his arm.

**:::**

_“Hurts more than I thought it would,” Shane said, looking down at the cut on his hand._

_Rick had answered, “It’s supposed to hurt,” because even as a kid younger than Carl, he had a habit of saying things like that, little profound phrases that would lead adults to remark on what an old soul he was. They were in his parent’s bathroom, trying to be quiet as they riffled through the first-aid kid. A boxcutter lying bloodied somewhere out in the garage. Holding their cut hands awkwardly away from their bodies._

_(A few years on, they would notice it had left a scar on Shane’s hand, but not on Rick’s, and Shane would say,_ Told you you were cutting deeper than I did _—and Rick would look horrified and apologize and volunteer to do it again, so they would both have a scar, but somehow they never got around to it—)_

_Rick dug out a bottle of antiseptic from the medicine cabinet and said, “We really are brothers now,” as simple as that, no special gravitas or showmanship, and then started unrolling a bundle of the bandages._

**:::**

The world returns all at once, with a small, subtle pop, like an altitude change on an airplane. Smell of copper, the edge of the counter digging into his hip, fragments of glass glinting under the ugly overhead light like a thousand uncut diamonds, Rick pressed up against his back and breathing as hard as if they’ve been fighting for hours. A pain in his cut hand that’s almost blinding, almost transcendental.

“Let go,” Shane gets out, and Rick does.

“Are there any bandages in here?” he asks.

“Bathroom cabinet.” Shane raises his hand in front of his face and inspects the damage, which is worse than he’d expected. A jagged cut, the skin torn straight open. He leans over the sink to keep from getting any more blood on his shirt—already a lost cause—and listens to Rick rummaging through the cabinet though the RV’s thin wall. He thinks the whiskey must be hitting harder than he expected, because it all seems to be happening on some other plane of reality, to someone standing slightly to his left. In the small window above the sink, a few raindrops catch the thin light and glitter with it. Shane watches them merge and course down the glass, picking two and betting on their race to the bottom, the way he had when he was a kid, until Rick returns from the bathroom with the first aid kit.

At a loss for what else to do, he lets it happen. Rick takes his hand, pours water over the cut, dabs at it with a handful of gauze. White to red. When the bleeding has slowed, Rick applies two butterfly bandages, a line of neosporin, and at last starts unwinding a roll of sterile bandages.

“You alright?” he asks.

Mostly on instinct, Shane says, “I think I’ll live.”

“I mean—” Rick breaks off and for a fragment of a second he pauses with the bandages, too, his gaze flicking up to Shane’s face and holding there.

Shane thinks the honest answer is probably no, but he doesn’t have the energy to say it. All the anger has gone out of him. Instead he just feels tired and unmoored, as if some final anchoring thread has been cut without warning, leaving him adrift, treading water.

Rick looks back down at the bandages, focusing. “Lori’s alright,” he says—a small mercy, saying it so Shane doesn’t have to ask, so they don’t have to fight over that, too. “More tired than usual, but…”

“That’s what you two been fighting about?” Shane asks.

Rick blinks; he looks as if he’s deciding whether or not to be furious. Then he gives a small, sharp shake of his head. “We’ll be fine,” he says. “Between that and Randall—” And then he interrupts himself, says instead, “At first, she didn’t want the baby. She tried to get rid of it.”

Shane knows he ought to feel something more at that; shock, horror—but he doesn’t.

“She changed her mind,” Rick goes on. “Or at least I thought she did.” And then, “Is this too tight?”

“It’s fine,” Shane says. In truth, he barely feels the bandages. All at once it makes sense. Rick doesn’t believe what happened had anything to do with random happenstance, bad luck, or stress. All the little details of the past few weeks rise up suddenly and rearrange themselves and click neatly into place, form a pattern Shane knows he should’ve seen all along.

Rick secures the bandage with a pair of safety pins. “Should have Hershel take a look at that in the morning, to be on the safe side,” he says. “Might need stitches.” His fingers linger on the edge of the bandage, the line between cloth and skin. Shane wonders if he’s thinking about that childhood foray with the boxcutter, too, and knows he probably isn’t. Still—Rick keeps his head bent and the moment goes on too long, stretches thin. After a while, Rick says, “Seems every time we try to talk anymore, one or both of us ends up bleeding.”

He clearly means it to sound like a joke, but his voice is raw around the edges. His thumb traces over Shane’s knuckles, and it’s tempting to jerk back, away from him, but Shane doesn’t. He isn’t sure why. For a long while there’s no sound but the rain ticking off the edge of the roof.

“You know what Lori said?” Rick says at last. “She said, ‘Maybe things will get better now.’ She meant—”

He looks up; breaks off, but Shane hears it anyway: _She meant with you_. _She meant maybe you’d care a little less, if there was no baby—_ And he hears that, and what Rick’s not saying afterwards: _This is your fault._

Shane would be furious—furious enough to hit him—if he didn’t think it was true.

“You think there’s any chance of that?” Rick asks.

“Of what?”

“Of this getting better.” His eyes are still turned away, almost guiltily, and when Shane doesn’t answer right away, he says, “I suppose I can’t stop myself looking for a silver lining. I just keep hoping one day I’m going to wake up and things will be the way they used to be.”

He doesn’t mean the world. Shane looks down at their hands, still together. At their fingers still threaded together at the knuckles. Something about the sight catches at him and it takes him a moment to realize what it is: Rick isn’t wearing his wedding ring.

Shane catches in a breath. A dark twist of inspiration. _That’s it,_ he thinks. _There it is._ There are subtler forms of destruction. The realization punches a neat hole through the haze in his thoughts, leaves him almost giddy with how perfect it is, and how simple. That’s it.

“The way things used to be,” he repeats. “Should’ve said something sooner, man.”

Rick’s mouth tastes like the whiskey they’ve been drinking.

**:::**

It was cheap beer, the first time.

**:::**

There’s no room for retreat in the RV. Rick takes half a startled step backwards and his back hits the cabinet there. A rattle of porcelain. But Shane supposes the whiskey is still in his corner, and he has the element of surprise, and for a moment Rick doesn’t react at all, and it’s as stiff and awkward as kissing a statue. Then he lets lets out a breath as though he’s been hit in the stomach and turns his face away.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Ain’t it?” Shane asks. He has that same exhilarating tightrope thrill he’d felt talking to Lori earlier. The knowledge that there’s no room for a misstep, that he has to get this just right. Thankfully he’s been through enough mental rehearsals of this scene—filing every sentence and every word into perfect, mathematical shape—that the next step feels almost like a memory. He raises his unbandaged hand to touch Rick’s face, and interjects just the right amount of confessional guilt into his voice. “I miss you.”

Rick’s awfully proud of his poker face, but the truth is he’s never learned to hide anything, not when it matters. His gaze is shocked, frightened, mind racing wildly behind his eyes—and he wants this, badly.

“I _can’t_.” But he doesn’t move away, and when Shane moves his hand down from Rick’s cheek to his chest, Rick doesn’t stop him. He’s holding himself very still. At the base of his throat, his pulse is thrumming hard, and Shane watches it, counting out the beats. When he’s counted nine, he undoes the first button of Rick’s shirt, then the second. Rick doesn’t stop him until he reaches the third, catching hold of his wrist. “Shane. I _can’t_.”

“Sure you can.”

“Lori’s still my wife. No matter what’s happened—”

“That so?”

Rick drops whatever he’d been about to say like a hot coal, and doesn’t pick it up again.

Shane presses, “Not like you can just file for divorce nowadays, is it?” and tries to twist his hand free, but Rick holds tight. Another gust of wind through the reedy cypresses around Hershel’s property. This isn’t going to work after all. Worth a shot.

“That day,” Rick says suddenly, “when we tried to drive Randall out and turn him loose. Do you remember what you told me?”

“Said a lot of things that day.”

That isn’t the answer Rick’s looking for. He blinks, glances somewhere off to his left. There seems to be some delicate, silent melodrama unfolding in his mind, and Shane says nothing, does nothing, letting it play out.

“Ever since Randall died—” Rick begins, and then, catching himself with a small shake of his head, “—since I killed him. I keep having these dreams. About you.”

Shane considers this. “Sounds romantic.”

“I don’t even remember what they’re about,” Rick says. “It’s just this feeling. I know they’re only dreams, but I can’t shake it. And then—” He looks up again, sharply. The RV’s gloomy half-light makes his eyes look somehow, impossibly, brighter. It’s like catching a taser zap. He says, “The other night, at dinner, I turned to say something to you and just for a second, it looked like there was no one sitting where you were. It scared the hell out of me.”

For a sliver of a second, Shane has to remind himself this is an act, this is a plan, he has a goal. He doesn’t know the next step to this, doesn’t even know where to start. They both stand perfectly still.

Anyone who’d ever met Rick could sum him up within about five minutes: he’s a good guy, a little boring. He likes things simple, the way he’s used to them, and even if he doesn’t always succeed, he always _tries_ to do the right thing. Not one person in a million makes so much goddamn effort at _doing the right thing_. So it was a shock, a clear-out-of-the-blue lightning strike of a shock, when he leveled his gun at Randall kneeling there in dirt and actually pulled the trigger. It’s a shock now, too, when he lets go of Shane’s wrist and says, “I miss you, too.”

**:::**

_They were on the floor the first time, because after a few too many cheap beers, the couch seemed like a dangerous balancing act. Laughing about something. Try as he might, Shane has never been able to remember what it was. He can remember everything else—late-day sunlight through the curtains, Aerosmith crackling through the radio, new uniforms hanging up in the closet, and static thrum of the air shifting between them—but not that. Not what they were laughing about a second before they weren’t, before Rick sat up, his face in strange angles of light and shadow, and put his hand to Shane’s cheek, as carefully and deliberately as an archaeologist touching an ages old relic. Before he said, “You wouldn’t tell anyone—would you?”_

_Afterwards, he’d explained he was only worried because of their new jobs—_ No one’s going to let us be partners if they think we’re _—and maybe that really was what he meant. Right at that moment, it didn’t matter what he meant—it mattered only that there was something to tell._

_There was something to tell, and every second that followed after it was attached to it._

**:::**

Shane traces his thumb along the waistband of Rick’s jeans. Ridge of hip bone, long vulnerable streak of skin. A flicker of heat surprises him. He can use that, he supposes. Won’t do much good going into this half-mast, anyway. He flattens his hand, moves it lower. Watches Rick’s eyes slide closed, the slow thrum of his pulse still knocking fast at the base of his throat, and knows he’s won. Rick stays perfectly still as their lips meet again. 

But for a split second, Shane wonders if he’s made a mistake. The kiss is as uneasy as the meeting mouths of strangers. Stiff and lifeless. He thinks about drawing away—he can already hear Rick muttering some half-assed apology, something about both of them being drunk—and, mostly to put it off another few seconds, he presses into the kiss harder. Rick’s hand comes up to his face, lips parting on a faint gasp. The warmth of his mouth. Something changes. It’s like grabbing hold of a live wire, or driving too fast down an icy road and discovering, all at once, that the brakes have been cut.

Shane hears stitches rip again, and wonders faintly whose shirt it was. Hears the cabinet rattle and thinks of that owl mug with its horrified expression looking on, wonders if it might fall. Rick has both hands on his face, kissing him hard enough to hurt.

Somehow they manage to make it to the tiny bedroom at the back of the RV, stumbling and almost dragging each other. Against the wall, Shane manages to get Rick’s shirt open—tearing as many buttons as he manages to undo—and ducks his head, lips on Rick’s shoulder, his chest. Taste of the same scavenged soap they’re all using, and something beneath it. Sweat and familiar skin. Shane hears his own voice, a surprisingly raw sound that’s not acting at all. None of it’s acting anymore.

“Is the door locked?” Rick asks, close to his ear.

Shane nods, though he’s not sure; he has a bad flash of Carl showing up weeks ago, awake from a nightmare—but the idea of stepping away and bothering with the deadbolt seems too dangerous to attempt. Stepping away even for a second—

Rick shrugs off the remains of his shirt; grabs the edge of Shane’s tee and gives it a hard jerk. Shane tugs it off and Rick’s hands are on his shoulders. The hard press of his fingers, like he’s drowning and looking for something to hold onto. Like he wants Shane to say it’s alright, to lie and say they’re not drowning, not today.

They’re moving again, and Shane feels the back of his legs hit the mattress and he lets himself be shoved down against it, Rick over him. And ain’t that just the cherry on top—that this was where Dale slept how the hell many nights. _This,_ Shane almost says aloud, _is sure as hell_ not _What Dale Would Have Wanted._

A moment, uncoordinated in the dark, tugging at the remains of their clothes. Shane sits up at the wrong moment and gets Rick’s elbow in his face. Belts. Jeans. For a split second, Rick pauses, breathing hard.

“Out of curiosity,” he asks, “when was the last time you wore underwear?”

“You’re gonna critique my wardrobe?” Shane says. “That’s some mighty big talk from a guy who looks like he stole half his clothes from some dude named Alamo Jack.”

He feels Rick laugh as much as hears it, that familiar low, startled sound, like the amusement had caught him unawares—and feels a sharp, painful twist behind his ribs. Been awhile since he heard that.

(They were laughing the first time—)

**:::**

_“This doesn’t change.”_

_They didn’t make it off the floor the first time, and Shane remembers the rough carpet digging at his back, remembers that it took him a dizzying second for the words to catch up with him. Rick saying anything, just then, was startling; Shane had thought him well beyond coherent speech ten minutes ago. A gasp, a shocked sound, Rick’s fingers digging at his hip,_ Oh, god, you feel good _—_

_It took him a moment to catch up with what Rick was actually saying, to realize Rick had caught hold of Shane’s hand and was kissing that scar on his palm, again and again. This doesn’t change._

_“You’re my brother. That’s before anything else. No matter what, we’re always going to—”_

_Shane was torn between laughter and exasperation—Rick always, always had the worst sense of timing—but he managed to say something to the effect that they would talk about eternal devotion later—“Right now,” he’d said, “you gotta shut up and just fuck me—”_

**:::**

It’s too much, all at once. Shane twists around, flipping them over. He kneels down at the edge of the bed and lowers his head and takes Rick’s cock into his mouth.

Rick swears, loud.

“Shane—Oh, Christ, I—”

He arches his hips, and it’s too much, unexpected; Shane very nearly gags, has to draw back to recover.

“Sorry,” Rick says, voice rough.

Shane shakes his head— _Don’t mention it_ —and lowers his head again. Lets his teeth scrape lightly over the underside of Rick’s cock in warning, does a clever trick with his tongue to make up for it. Rick gives a hiss, drops his head back against the pillows. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Before, he used to twist his fingers in Shane’s hair—without that handhold, he makes a convulsive grab at the sheets, presses his palm flat against the wall.

“Wait—Shane, _wait_ —” His heel digs in between Shane’s shoulder blades, and Shane draws back. In the dim light from the next room, Rick’s eyes are dark, mostly pupil. “You keep that up, I’m not going to last long,” he says on a laugh, and reaches out. Shane lets himself be drawn in, lets Rick kiss him again—open mouthed, all tongue and teeth, no hesitation now. He speaks against Shane’s mouth, “Tell me you have lube,” and then he doesn’t give Shane a chance to respond. Their mouths are together, hard enough to bruise, so Shane manages a nod instead. Not much time or point in romance right now. There’s a bottle of Astroglide tucked away in the bag at the side of the bed. Not that he’s had much use for it, lately.

He disentangles himself from the bed and it takes him only a moment to find it in the dark. When he returns, straddling Rick’s hips, and pops open the cap, Rick sits up and grabs his hand.

“Let me—”

“ _No_.” It’s like having ice water dashed in his face, and for a brief, sober moment, the idea of having Rick’s fingers inside him makes him feel almost sick. He knows he won’t be able to stand it, that he’ll wind up ruining it, will say something he can’t take back. He pours a bit of lube out onto his fingers—cold—and handles it himself—Christ, that’s _cold_ —as quickly as he can, not wanting to give Rick any disastrous ideas about taking things slow. Which, sure, he’ll probably regret—he pours out a generous amount of lube into his palm and gives Rick’s cock a few thorough strokes, for good measure.

Rick gives a small hiss through his teeth. “Have you been keeping that in a _freezer_?” he asks, voice tight in the dark.

Shane kisses him again, mostly just to shut him up. Rick makes a low, urgent sound against his mouth. Says his name once. Shane sits back, grasps Rick’s cock and holds him steady. He finds the right angle and presses down, and—Without warning everything inside his head goes very bright.

He feels Rick holding himself still and tense. “You alright?”

“Fine.”

It’s not fine. Shane rises up, and eases himself down carefully, and the breath goes shaking out of him.

Rick’s hands are on his thighs, only shaking a little, thumbs drawing small, soothing circles. “We can stop,” he says, his voice soft, only a fraction strained.

“I’m fine,” Shane says again, and rocks his hips to emphasize the point. To his credit, Rick holds out another thirty seconds of that before he arches up beneath him, once, desperate and involuntary, and Shane feels it everywhere, a sharp white jolt of pleasure flashing up his spine.

“Oh— _fuck_.”

The pace is at first uncoordinated, awkward. It’s been a while—a very long while—and they’re out of practice with each other. The wrong angles and the wrong timing and for a few minutes it’s not very good at all. Shane wonders how weird it would be to stop now, to say it’s not working, good try, and call it quits for the night. Then by increments, by seconds, it changes. They fall into a rhythm and then the rhythm turns hectic—quick, hard shoves of their hips, Rick making a series of short, sharp noises, Shane’s hands clutching at his shoulders hard enough to bruise. The RV silent except for the creak of mattress springs, those lewd sounds. Neither of them is going to last long after all. Shane has always been able to lose himself in sex—physical sensation, that’s all it is—and he’s almost succeeding at it now. Everything dangerously good, coiling tighter by the second—

“ _Shane_.”

He realizes through the haze that Rick has said his name more than once now, and seems to want a response.

“What?”

“I’m sorry.” His hand on Shane’s chest, palm flat, shaking only a little. His fingers on the pendant of Shane’s necklace, uncoordinated. A faint tug. Shane moves with it, leaning down so his forearms are braced on the mattress and he can feel Rick’s harsh exhale on his lips. A different angle. Better. Rick’s saying something, but Shane’s thoughts are starting to unravel rapidly and and the words are muffled and all he catches is, “God, Shane, I’m so sorry—”

And all at once it’s not a game. It’s some some stupid argument they’re having about who gets to pick what’s on the radio, who spilled sweet tea on who’s homework. Shane realizes his hand is on Rick’s throat, maybe has been for a while. It’s not gentle. The hard, fast thrum of Rick’s pulse beneath his fingers. He thinks of Rick saying, _If it was your family, you’d feel differently_ , and of Lori standing out in front of Hershel’s house with the sun in her hair, of Carl’s constant look of worry, and of how it would be no effort at all to tighten his fingers and squeeze.

Rick grabs his wrist, hard. It like catching a jolt from an electric fence. Shane feels his fingers go slack. Rick lifts his hand away, keeps his grip. He raises Shane’s palm to his lips and kisses the scar there, once.

**:::**

They’d made it about a year, which Shane thinks is more than any betting man would’ve put on them. Sometimes he thinks they might’ve made it longer, if Rick’s dad hadn’t died, though he tells himself it still would’ve been nothing more than prolonging the inevitable. That it had been inevitable from day one.

Rick was gone for ten days—Shane stayed at work, because _My best friend’s dad is dying_ was about on par with _The dog ate my homework_ so far as their captain was concerned—and during those ten days, Rick called three times: to say it was bad, to say it was over, and to say he was heading back after the funeral.

He’d gotten back just past noon, dressed in black and smelling of foreign detergent, looking like he’d lost a bit of weight he could ill-afford to lose. There was something else different, too, something Shane only noticed when he put an arm around Rick’s shoulders and hugged him: a kind of dark static cloud in the air around them, a sense of some huge, final, dragging sadness.

It was there even after Rick had taken a shower and smelled like himself again; it was there after he slept for a few hours, and dragged himself out into the living room looking utterly blackjacked. Whatever it was, it was more than a funeral hang-on, more than grief. They got take-out for dinner and Rick ate a few pieces of plain white rice out of the carton and then set it aside.

“We shouldn’t do this anymore.”

“Panda Garden really is slipping, ain’t it?” Shane said, though he knew that wasn’t what Rick meant, had known this conversation was coming for a while and knew that was how it would start, because Rick never could bear to say whatever _this_ was.

“He said he wanted me to have what he had,” Rick said. “He said if I ever found someone and felt half as much as he felt for my mom—” He broke off there, blinking hard, but his voice, when he spoke again, was almost unbearably steady, “I could’ve told him. He would’ve been happy for us, you know that? It wasn’t like he would have disowned me on his deathbed, or even—I think it would have made him happy.”

He was silent for a while; a silence that wasn’t an invitation for response, and then he said, “I guess I’m not as brave as I thought I was.”

He took Shane’s hand off the couch and twisted it around, kissed the scar there. Said some things about how Shane was the most important person in his life and how they’d made such a mistake, that this might ruin everything between them now that it’s ending, and should have known better than to start it. “You’re my best friend. My brother,” and he ran his thumb over the scar to emphasize the point, “—and that doesn’t ever change. I want you with me. But I want what my dad said—what he had. I want us both to have a shot at a normal life.”

Shane remembers thinking it was temporary, all self-pitying and tangled up in grief, and Rick would change his mind. He remembers lying awake that night with a hollow feeling in his stomach, watching the bedroom door, certain any minute it would open. It stayed closed—that night, and all the ones after, right up until they could both afford their own separate crappy apartments.

 _It’s good news,_ Rick had said, _Leastways, I hope you’ll think it’s good news,_ and it was years later, so Shane only registered one second’s tiny, needle-sharp pain before he said, “You kidding me? That’s _great_ news.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes,” Shane had said, and it was true. He’s meant it when he’d said _Yes_ to being the best man at the wedding, too, and when he’d thrown an arm around Rick’s shoulders right before the ceremony and called him _Brother_. And Rick was right, after all: that didn’t change. Somehow, for all the rest of it, they’d made it through with their friendship in tact. It wasn’t like they were soulmates.

“Immediate family only in the ambulance,” a paramedic had said in a rush, and, back over his shoulder, “Gunshot wound, no exit! Sir—” He was addressing Shane again, “Are you immediate family?”

He almost said yes. Like there was any way of checking. He thought in a rush of Rick saying, _We really are brothers now,_ and he almost said it. _Yes. Yes, we’re family._ In the end all he’d been able to get out was, “Is he going to die? Can you—can you tell me if he’s going to die—”

And then the meaningful _thump_ of the ambulance door closing in his face.

**:::**

Dale’s bed is too narrow for two people. Lying there with his eyes closed tight, getting his breath back, Shane wonders if he’ll ever stop thinking of it as Dale’s bed. He’s not sure how he wound up on his back, Rick pressed flush against his side, but they’re there now. Rick’s cheek against his shoulder. Scrape of stubble. Rain on the roof. Cooling sweat.

For some reason, the thought of Lori goes through him like a shot, then—it might’ve been her here instead, might be her hair falling around his face and her lips on his lips—but she seems a thousand miles away, lost somewhere in the dark, unreachable.

“I need a shower,” Rick says, after a while. It isn’t the apology— _I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done this, I don’t know what I was_ —that Shane’s been expecting. Rick still has their fingers twisted together, his thumb drawing slow circles over Shane’s knuckles, and he doesn’t sound guilty, or angry, or cold for the first time in what feels like a thousand years. “So do you. Another one.”

Without opening his eyes, Shane says, “I don’t think Hershel’s going to be that generous.”

“Well, Hershel’s asleep.” There’s the hint of a smile in his voice; the same note he used to get when they were younger, back when he used get the occasional bout of rebellious mischief, before whatever it was—life, maybe—had stamped that out of him. “You could join me.”

“That’ll be a fun conversation when someone gets up to take a piss in the middle of the night.”

“Door’s got a lock.”

“What happened to being good house guests?”

“Figure that ship’s mostly sailed.”

It’s almost tempting. When Rick’s in this mood—relaxed, warm, without some of those sharp edges—it’s impossible not to love him. Very possible not to _like_ him, still, but love’s always been something else, anyway.

By morning, of course, Rick will realize what a mistake he’s made. He’ll chalk it up to whiskey and self-pity. Act Three: straying husband realizes how far he’s fallen and goes back to his ever-patient, ever-forgiving wife, and they resolve to get past this together. Roll credits. But he hasn’t gotten there yet, wouldn’t still be here if he had. Not yet, Shane thinks, not right now, and he can’t help reaching out, just for a second. Rick’s skin is warm under his hand. All the familiar bone and scars and shape of him. All the unfamiliar, too. He has lost weight. And there’s a new scar, right on his side, perfectly round. _Gunshot wound, no exit—_

Shane moves his hand away from it. He thinks if he tries, he could imagine this is something else. He could imagine they’re back in that crappy apartment with the leaking roof. Could imagine it’s just like Rick said: Things the way they were. It’s going to be alright after all. The rest of their lives ahead of them. Plenty of time to fix this.

“God,” Rick says, half muffled against his shoulder. “I missed you.”

Shane drops his hand away. This is real. He’s not going to wake up. There are no do-overs, no getting better, no magic, no use pretending.

“So,” he says. “That’s it with you and Lori, then?”

He feels Rick go very still, then draw away. “You ever stop thinking about her?”

“One’ve us ought to.”

“You have to do this right now?”

Shane gives it up, lying back in silence. The pleasant, soft-edged buzz of the whiskey is mostly gone, and there’s a scratching and scraping in his head, an ugliness he can’t shut off. After a moment of lying there stiffly in the dark, Rick disengages from him, sits up abruptly.

“If Lori wanted to be out here with you right now, Shane, she’d be here,” he says—and then, when Shane catches in his breath a little too quickly, “Yeah, I figured it out. You’re all packed up. Bed’s made. Pacing around like you’re waiting for someone. Sure as hell wasn’t for me. What was the offer? You and her just taking off in the middle of the night? Leave a note for me and Carl?”

It’d be easy to lie—or apologize. Go right back to that relaxed warmth. Instead Shane says, “Figured she’d bring Carl along, too.”

There’s a moment. Then a flurry of motion so abrupt he almost jumps, almost expects a punch to the face. Rick’s fingers settle on his cheek instead. His voice in the dark is low and urgent.

“Shane. Look at me.”

It’s impossible not to. Shane opens his eyes. They left the light on in the RV’s kitchen, but didn’t bother with the one in the bedroom; Rick is a silhouette in the dark, mostly shadow. 

“I need you to listen to me,” he says. “Hear what I’m telling you. You’re out of last chances. Do you understand that?”

He sounds so serious, so intent, that Shane can’t help it—he almost laughs. When did he become so hysterical? Rick must feel it, between them, because he goes on, all the more levelly still, “We’ve had this conversation twice now. There won’t be a third time.”

“Or _what_ , Rick?”

“I can’t do this. I can’t keep watching my back around you. I can’t afford to. It’s like having a rabid dog around.”

“Rabid dog?” Shane repeats, disbelieving; he half expects Rick to backtrack, to say again, _I don’t know why I said that_ —but he doesn’t. He doesn’t add anything, doesn’t try to clarify or soften the words, just lets them hang there. Shane brushes his hand away, sits up. “What are you going to do, man—lock me up in the barn and wait for a cure?” The viciousness of his own voice surprises him, but Rick doesn’t take the bait, just sits there in silence, and after a second, Shane gets it. “Hell, I guess we both seen the movie. Old Yeller don’t quite make it to the end credits, does he?”

The steady tick, tick, of rain on the window. Rick sits very still for a moment. Then he jerks away, gets up from bed, starts rapidly gathering up discarded clothes from the floor.

“You know,” he says, “for a minute there, I really thought things were getting better.” He tugs on a pair of pants—maybe his, maybe not. In the half light, his hair is standing up in strange places, flat in others, a disheveled shadow, but he doesn’t bother to try straightening it out. “Even after everything,” he says, “I thought—we’ve been through so much. There had to be some way out. Something I wasn’t seeing.”

It’s too exhausting to try guessing what he means. Shane leans back against the pillows, runs a hand over his face. “Way out of what?”

Rick doesn’t answer. He says, “You got an ace up your sleeve, now’d be the time to play it. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know how to fix this.”

“That what you thought was happening here?” Leave it to Rick to find some moral justification for adultery. Shane doesn’t bother looking at him. “You figure we just fuck once and it’ll be just like old times—that it? Always did think a lot of yourself.”

He listens to Rick moving around the tiny excuse for a room. The rustle of clothes, the metallic clatter of his belt buckle. It puts a grain of panic in Shane’s chest, but he’s done this before, and he’s braced for it this time, manages to keep still and say nothing. He can pull that off, for a few minutes, until Rick gathers his things and gets back into the house, back to his wife.

But Rick doesn’t leave. There’s a stillness as he finishes gathering his clothes. Then, so quietly Shane almost misses it, “You know why I killed Randall?”

It’s so unexpected Shane can’t help but open his eyes. “What?”

“It wasn’t because he was dangerous,” Rick says. He’s sitting at the edge of the bed, his profile slivered in half by the shadows, like the edge of a coin. “Or because I was worried about that group of his. It wasn’t self defense. Dale was right and I knew it. I just— Everything you put on me about making those tough calls. God, it was a person’s life, and I—” He breaks off, sits for a moment without speaking, without moving. When he goes on, there’s a raw edge to his voice. “I can’t even look Carl in the eyes anymore. I don’t want him growing up to be like me. Neither does Lori, after I told her. We made it through everything else, but—She says I’m not the man she thought she married. I don’t blame her. All this time, I thought I was—better than that.”

There’s nothing to say to that. Shane sits up, and his head does a strange lurch, like he’s more drunk than he realized, all of it still catching up with him.

Rick says, “I was just so sick of you and me being at each other’s throats all the time. I wanted my best friend back. In my head I had it screwed around where it wasn’t too late. I suppose I thought—I just I had to prove something to you. If I pulled that trigger, I thought it’d—fix something, between us. And instead—”

He stops there, summing them up in that silence.

“I don’t know, man,” Shane says, after a while. “Think I’d ask for my money back.”

Rick lets out a small, shallow breath. The pale flash of his eyes in the half light, and his hand is on Shane’s cheek again, without any urgency now, without heat, and when their lips meet, it’s chaste and almost brotherly, nothing behind it. Shane holds himself very still, bearing it out, because he knows what it is: just Rick’s way of saying goodbye. This it means this godawful wreck of a conversation is almost over.

Almost, but not quite. Rick’s fingers trace the curve of his cheek, his brow, as if reading braille, as if trying to memorize something important. Very clearly, he says, “I love you.”

And the worst part—the thing Shane can’t stand, the thing that hurts like catching a blow from an axe right in his chest—is that Rick isn’t even saying it because he’s still trying. He isn’t still desperately scrabbling for some magic phrase that will solve all this, a way out, a happy ending. Even his eternal optimism has its limits.

The worst part is he’s saying it because he means it.

Shane draws away. His own response feels inevitable as the tug of a whirlpool.

“Cheer up, man. Always a chance you just _think_ you do, but you don’t.”

**:::**

When he’s alone, there’s still the problem of the broken glass in the kitchen. Dale didn’t keep a dust pan on hand. Hershel will probably have something in the house that Shane can borrow, come morning. In the meantime he gets dressed, shoes and all, and uses the edge of a book he’s not going to read to edge most of the glass into a neat pile on the floor.

Far enough away in the house that it comes to him more as a sensation than a sound, a door closes.

**:::**

After everything, Shane’s not expecting to be able to get to sleep, but he strips the sheets off the bed and lays down in his clothes and somehow he does.

Usually, he doesn’t dream. He’ll jerk awake sometimes—who doesn’t—but it’s never anything more than reflex, never more than adrenaline. And anyway, between Rick and Carl, it seems their small group ought to be right at their quota for ominous nightly visions of things to come. And, being fair, it’s not a dream, not exactly. Just what Rick said. A feeling, something on its way, something already here. No matter how they change the route, there’s no changing the destination.

He wakes just after dawn, disoriented for a moment by the lack of moonlight. Phantom taste of copper in his mouth, pile of broken glass in the kitchen, some conversation unraveling in the house (or maybe no conversation at all), Randall’s group still out there somewhere. Still, the same unchanged and inevitable bitterness upon bitterness he had with Rick the day before, and the day before that.

The only difference is that now he knows what happens next.

**:::**

Before all this, though—before the world went to hell, before that ambulance door slamming shut, before Lori and Carl and before Rick with all his ‘normal life’ bullshit—yeah, there was a snowstorm.

The day it happened, there was something about the strange new edge to the cold, something breathless about the stillness in the air, something that said, _Just wait_. And then that night, they were at one of those endless small parties from those days and all at once the grey sky opened up there it was: huge white flakes falling like broken-winged moths. Everyone stood with their faces pressed against the glass, eyes wide at the novelty of it. People commented on what it would do to traffic and watched it for a while and then went back to beer pong and charades.

Shane had bailed out into the storm with Rick a step behind him, and it didn’t take long before they were pummeling each other with snowballs. After getting the worst of it, Shane raised his hands to surrender, and Rick stood in all that white downfall, a knot of energy, strands of wet hair matted to his brow, bright eyes glittering ferociously, a smile lifting him off the ground—and then he fired another one right at Shane’s forehead.

There’s plenty of moments Shane can remember and point to and say, _That one, there, that’s something_ , or _That’s when it all started to go wrong,_ or, _That was the end of it,_ but if he’s being honest with himself, the real moment was right then: shaking snow out of his hair and lunging to scoop up another handful from the ground before it melted. That moment was the one to measure all the rest against, whatever came before or after, because right then Shane only remembers thinking how he couldn’t believe it. How he just couldn’t believe how lucky he was.

**::: ::: :::**


End file.
